


Hive Mind

by voidknight



Series: Assorted Statements from the Archives, dated 2017-2018 [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bees, Books, Gen, Leitner Books (The Magnus Archives), Mentions of Jane Prentiss, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Season/Series 02, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Surreal, The Corruption, graphic descriptions of beehives, location-based horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:13:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidknight/pseuds/voidknight
Summary: Statement of Marina Makkai, regarding a visit to Flick Books, London.
Series: Assorted Statements from the Archives, dated 2017-2018 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812076
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Hive Mind

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this back in april when i was first getting into tma, and i figured i could publish it here! i've written more than one original statement, and i'll put them all into a series as i publish them

Statement of Marina Makkai, regarding a visit to Flick Books, London. Original statement given April 5th, 2013. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

* * *

I’m not actually scared of insects. Any of them, really, not even ants, though I suppose I’m not much of a fan of imagining what it might feel like to have them crawling all over your skin. Spiders—fine, too, as long as they keep away from me. But those aren’t insects, are they? Anyway. I felt like I needed to get that out of the way before beginning my story. Because it… wasn’t the  _ insects _ that were the real scary part.

This was a couple months ago—February, I think. I know it was cold, and it was after dinner, so night had certainly fallen by then. I don’t entirely remember where I went to eat? I think it was an Italian place. Doesn’t matter now. But as I was walking back home, I came across this bookstore I’d never seen before.

It was one of those shops that’s sandwiched between two others, giving the illusion that maybe it’s actually part of the store on the left or the right. It didn’t draw attention to itself. But once my eyes had actually fallen on it, it was clear what it was. The outside was painted an almost-green, almost-black, a faded color that reminded me of the head of a mallard duck. The paint was flaky. Though the two small windows on either side of the door certainly held a display of books—new, popular titles alongside a good number of classics—the glass was thick, and the lighting falling on the display was somewhat dim. Again, not the sort of thing that would catch the eye of a passerby. Across the top, above the door, was written “Flick Books” in a neat serif font.

I went in, of course. The store was only a ten minute walk from my house, and it certainly looked to have been here a while—I was more curious than anything. I like to think of myself as the sort of person who knows all the local shops fairly well, and I’m a regular at some of Camden’s other independent bookstores. Flick Books certainly presented an opportunity to get to know another one.

At my entrance, a tiny bell rang, and the woman sitting at the register perked up. She was not the sort of person I’d expect to be working in (what I presumed was) a used bookstore—she was young, no more than twenty or maybe twenty-five. She had light olive skin, and long blonde hair with prominent bangs that hid her eyebrows. Her eyes were almost the only part of her I could see—she wore a jacket, gloves, an orange scarf, and a fabric face mask with little patterns of flowers on it. That last bit struck me as odd—maybe she had a cold, or maybe it was just the dust of the store getting to her. It was barely warmer inside the store than outside, so I assumed the heating had broken and went on my way.

The woman’s eyes followed me. They were warm brown, and bright. Very bright.

At a cursory glance, Flick Books felt… well, like any other used bookstore. Each old wooden shelf was so tall it touched the ceiling, creating narrow corridors through the building. A couple tables set out near the front held more of the latest interesting releases. It was then that I really took a look at the sorts of books on offer. Most were nonfiction, and none of them struck me as the sort of thing that would appeal to a general audience. One was all about human parasites, of all things. Another looked like a history of the Spanish Flu. There was more than one guide to local wildflowers.

Finally, two books sat in a glass cabinet to the right of the central desk. Both were old, worn, and dusty. The first was leather-bound, had no title, and looked like great chunks of it had been chewed by an animal. I felt like a single touch might have disintegrated a sheet of the yellow pages inside. The second was a red hardback entitled  _ Practical Occultism in Daily Life. _ The way it sat there so innocently made me feel… weird. I don’t know.

I ventured down one of the hallways of books, and quickly began to feel the shelves pressing in around me. A couple stains pockmarked the faded teal carpet. At around the same time I noticed a faint smell, unlike the smell of old books, that hung in the close stillness—something like dried sweat, or maybe vomit, mixed with a sweeter scent. It wasn’t pleasant, but easily ignorable. The hall was longer than I expected, and as soon as I got far enough in I began to feel warm. It was the sort of warmth that comes from tight, musty, insulated spaces, where air hasn’t circulated in days. I took off my coat and laid it on a stool, promising myself that I wouldn’t forget it later.

This far back into the shop, the books weren’t stacked nearly as neatly. They were piled haphazardly onto the shelves—and the floor—like Jenga blocks, and, like Jenga blocks, I felt that if I removed one, five more might come crashing down in my face, sending great clouds of dust into the air. As I looked closer, however, it seemed like there might be a pattern to the  _ shape _ of the filing. The way the books leaned against each other—tessellated—seemed purposeful, though I couldn’t have guessed why. It felt like I was heading into a tunnel of nothing but books.

A faint buzzing alerted me to the sound of a honeybee drifting above me. There was no indication of where it had come from, or where it went after it disappeared back the way I had come.

I decided that I had better start checking out some of the individual books—that’s what bookstores are for, aren’t they? It appeared I was in the science fiction and fantasy section—books here were crammed so tightly into the shelves that I couldn’t see even a hint of the wall behind them. Familiar titles like  _ Dune _ and  _ Ender’s Game _ and  _ I, Robot _ greeted me from the old, sagging shelves. White lines ran down the spines of most of these books, indicating how many times they’d been held open.

I selected a book mostly at random—it had a very 70s cover, and a title in a font that offended my graphic design senses—and carefully removed it from the shelf. It was surprisingly resistant. When I pulled it out, I saw the reason for that—the bottom was coated in some sort of sticky yellow substance that oozed and glistened in the light. I dropped it instantly, before I could really tell what it was. My hand felt unclean somehow, though none of the yellow stuff had touched it.

I peered into the opening the book had left on the shelf. Whatever was behind those books did not look like a wall. It was shiny, pale yellow and off-white, and somehow warped, like an organic rather than an artificial barrier. Light shone through it, and I registered a flickering movement on the other side of it. More sticky solution sat congealed on the shelf.

Taking a tissue from my pocket, I picked up the book with two fingers and shoved it back into the hole. That  _ should _ have been the wall between Flick Books and whatever building was to the right of it—a stationery store, I think. But clearly there was something else.

That might have been the end of it if I hadn’t seen the door. It was adjacent to the science fiction shelf, and so covered in posters for various new book series that I would not have registered it as a door had my eyes not fallen on the tiny handle.

I glanced back towards the front of the shop, a good thirty feet away from where I was standing, though from my perspective the distance seemed longer. Behind the window was only the blackness of the night. If I was quiet, surely the woman at the desk wouldn’t hear me.

The door didn’t creak when I cracked it open. But as I did so, the sound of buzzing streamed out of it—the cacophonous hum of a thousand insects. The noise was definitely loud enough to alert anyone else in the store of what I was doing, but nevertheless I pulled it wider and poked my head inside.

The room within was coated in honeycomb. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, even the other side of the door all bore this yellow, sickly, dripping honeycomb, with its uncanny, unending hexagons. Huge swathes of it hung from the ceiling like layers of draped fabric, shapes that felt like they should be formed out of wind, not curving wax. There were no right angles, no sharp points, just the swooping organic forms, ever riddled with hexagons. The room was a square, the length of a car in all dimensions, and it was flooded with a pale, ambient light that seemed to have no source. Maybe the honey itself was glowing.

In the very center was an enormous mass of bees. It flowed like water, pulsating and undulating, no single bee out of place. It all moved as one. There seemed to be a rhythm—for a moment I was reminded of a grotesque heart, beating out of time, too slowly then too quickly. Had I been without my glasses, I might have seen a tawny, distorted sphere hanging in the air.

As I watched, mouth agape, an object dropped from the swarm and hit the waxy floor. It was an old, brown book. The last thing I noticed before I slammed the door shut was its title— _ On Egregore. _ It was not a word I recognized.

When I whirled around, the woman from the desk was standing at the end of the hallway. Just standing there in a completely neutral stance. Watching.

“Don’t mind them,” she said.

I noticed that her clothes were moving slightly—tiny motions, like little fingers tapping at the other side of her scarf, from inside her jacket. Or like there was something in there with her, crawling around underneath her clothes.

I ran out of the store as fast as I could.

When I was back on the street, coatless and freezing, I stared back at Flick Books. Judging by the shape of the building, an entire room extending from the rightmost wall would have been an architectural impossibility.

I haven’t been back there since.

* * *

Statement ends.

Yet another bookstore, and yet another hive. What’s interesting to me here is that Ms. Makkai’s experience seems rather tame for an account of a cross with the supernatural. I would guess that, as much as it may have unnerved her, it does not seem like anything in Flick Books meant her harm.

Cursory research confirms the existence of Flick Books, a small used bookstore near Camden. It is owned by one Cressida Flick, who matches the description of the woman at the register given in this statement. She is 24, was born in Hampshire, and graduated two years ago from University College London with degrees in English literature and mathematics. After graduating she seems to have largely dropped off the map—this account seems to be the only proof that she is still alive.

There is a distinct possibility that this Cressida Flick is the same sort of being as Jane Prentiss, though a more… benign one, to say the least, as far as I can tell from the fact that she did not attempt to physically attack Ms. Makkai. The insect connection is there, and I would not be surprised if her face mask and scarf hid honeycombed holes in her flesh. The smell that Ms. Makkai describes in the bookstore is also reminiscent of the flesh hive.

I sent Tim to Flick Books to investigate. Another employee was at the register, who knew of Cressida Flick but could not tell him much about her. She denied the existence of any giant hive in the building. Tim was unable to find the door described in this statement, or the wall made of wax, though both could easily have been painted over. He did, however, find drops of honey on many of the shelves.

Finally, there is the matter of the books. Though there is not enough information to identify the chewed-up one, the other seems to be a first edition of  _ Practical Occultism in Daily Life _ by well-known occultist Dion Fortune. However, I can find no records of the book  _ On Egregore, _ and I have a sinking suspicion that our old friend Mr. Leitner might be involved here. Interestingly, “egregore” is an occult concept that refers to a kind of collective group consciousness—or “hive mind.”

End recording.


End file.
